The excitement continues to build for the 34th annual National BDPA Technology Conference and Career Expo to be held at the Downtown Hilton in Baltimore, Maryland on August 1-4, 2012. The theme for the conference is 'Transforming the IT Professional'. BDPA recently announced that the Awards Gala keynote speaker will be Dr. Ernest McDuffie.

In early 2010 the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) was selected as the lead agency for the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education and Dr. McDuffie was appointed as the Lead for this effort. In his previous position he had been appointed the Associate Director of the National Coordination Office (NCO) for Networking and Information Technology Research and Development in February 2008. From early September 2009 until early November 2009 he served as Acting Director of the NCO. His appointment as the Associate Director of the NCO comes after joining the NIST as a Computer Scientist in their Information Technology Laboratory, Office of Federal and Industrial Relations. In August 2006, Dr. McDuffie joined the NCO where he served as the Technical Coordinator for the Cyber Security and Information Assurance Inter-agency Working Group, Federal Agency Administration of Science and Technology Education and Research Committee of Practice, and the Software Design and Productivity Coordination Group.Prior to joining the NCO, Dr. McDuffie served as the Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Research – Science and Technology for America's Readiness Initiative. He served as the Lead Program Director for the Federal Cyber Service: Scholarship for Service Program at the National Science Foundation.

He served as an Assistant Professor at Florida State University in the Department of Computer Science where he taught both graduate and undergraduate courses in CS for seven years. Dr. McDuffie has participated in software engineering projects for the U.S. Air Force, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Federal Aviation Administration, Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the National Security Agency.

Dr. McDuffie received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida. Dr. McDuffie will address IT industry executives and IT, Cyber, and STEM professionals in front of a distinguished audience of national High School Computer Competition and IT Showcase finalists.